Your strategies must be driven by a sense of purpose if they are to be effective.
There are two questions you must ask yourself when developing a digital marketing strategy:
- Does my current strategy seem to be working?
- What am I hoping to achieve by developing a new digital marketing strategy?
As a starting point for your digital marketing strategy, consider the following:
• Create a comprehensive business plan — think big for a year (12 months) and then back down (6 months, 3 months, and the current month).
• Define key performance indicators — How would you know if your digital strategy objectives have been met? The answer will differ, but it will be reasonable. A small team, for example, is unlikely to be able to produce 2,000-word, high-quality blog content five times a week.
• Make a digital marketing strategy — what online tools would you use and how would you use them?
• Put your strategy into action — Stick to your goals and track your progress.
• Examine the results—what worked well? What are the areas where you can add value? What changes should be made in the future?
Let’s take a closer look at the necessary steps
Step One: Digital Marketing Channels
Create brand awareness by utilizing the most suitable digital marketing platforms for your business. On the platforms where your audience spends the most time, promote useful content that serves them well.
Choosing which marketing channel to use first can be difficult. However, there are six digital marketing channels from which every business can benefit:
• Google AdWords provides budgeting and measurement tools to help you stay on track with your digital marketing objectives.
• Organic traffic to your website can be generated through content marketing and SEO.
• Email lists can be used to engage your audience and invoke an action, ideally within a set time frame.
• Affiliate marketing is especially useful if you don’t have the staff or time to market online.
• Social media marketing connects directly to diverse groups of people who regularly utilize social media.
• Affiliate marketing is especially helpful if you don’t have the manpower or time to market online.
How do you know which channel will be the most effective for you? With the evaluation, you conducted of your current situation and your long-term objectives.
Step two: Creating Content
Content includes tweets, images, videos, and blog posts. Here’s how to make content that will help you with your digital marketing strategy:
Make sure your website’s theme is mobile-friendly. Mobile devices will account for a significant portion of your website traffic. You don’t lose traffic when your web pages adapt to a user’s screen size.
Next, tell a story that poses a question to your audience. You’ll need incredible content for this:
1. Research — Find out where your audience is and what kind of content they require.
2. Brainstorm — Based on your research, come up with a list of content ideas that will best serve your target market. Use Buzzsumo, Ahrefs, as well as other analytic tools to look at competitor content.
3. Perform content research — Look for reports, trends, white papers, videos, and other related content that can help you achieve your content creation objectives.
4. Make a plan — Figure out how you’ll distribute the content. Will you make a video, an infographic, a podcast, a blog post, or something else entirely? Create punchy headlines and hashtags, for whichever way you choose, to capture your audience’s attention.
5. Create and Review — After you’ve finished creating your content, ask yourself (or your colleagues) if there’s anything you can do to improve it. Is that content truly beneficial to the intended audience? Is the concept conveyed effectively? Is it better to make a video rather than an infographic?
6. Put it into action and evaluate it — To your audience, present the content. Was it circulated? How often do you do it? Which digital media platforms are you using? What can be made better? Is it likely to be useful in the months and years ahead?
Step Three: Paid Advertisements
In general, you’ll gain valuable data almost immediately by advertising (AdWords, social, or display ads) rather than indirectly promoting through content marketing, SEO, or email. This allows for quick ad copy and conversion rate testing. Once you’ve found a successful campaign, expand it to other platforms.
Assess your requirements and devise a strategy, but don’t go overboard. You simply want to figure out how to grow your brand’s presence while also serving its target audience. It is more effective to concentrate on one or two channels rather than attempting to grasp all six.
What is the relevance of this?
• Your audience will respect you as an authority figure. For service-based businesses and solopreneurs, this is certainly relevant.
• As a thought leader, your audience will start to believe you.
Step Four: Content Sharing
You can integrate content sharing into your digital marketing strategy in a few different ways.
Posts on the blog
• Add social sharing buttons to each post’s top, bottom, and/or side. You can use Social Pug, a popular WordPress plugin.
• Create eye-catching GIF tweets or Instagram quotes that readers can easily share with a single click.
Sharing on social media
• Posts can be scheduled to appear on specific social media platforms.
• Post your content to all of your personal and community accounts on social media.
• Using online or desktop publishing software, create a share-worthy graphic connected to your content.
• Send new posts, as well as updates or special offers, to your email list.
Step Five: Repurposing of Content
Different learning styles and needs exist among the audience members. Some people may not have time to read a blog post but can listen to a podcast while driving to work. Repurposing your most popular posts allows you to reach a wider audience and provide them with new ways to interact with your content.
Additional repurposing possibilities include:
• If you’ve conducted interviews with experts, publish their insights through an eBook.
• Create slides from PowerPoint presentations and embed them in a blog post.
• Turn an old blog post series into tutorial guides and e-courses.
• Use long-form content, webinars, or videos to create checklists.
• When repurposing content, keep the intended user in mind. Add new information or expand on topics that were only briefly discussed previously.
Conclusion
Having a strong content marketing strategy can help help you expand your business and increase new sales and conversions. Your start-up can respond with its audience through suitable digital marketing channels, sharing quality content, and encouraging content co-creation if you have a digital marketing plan in place.
